


Left, Right, Left

by staranise



Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Afghanistan, Backstory, Bisexuality, Character Study, Gen, Military, POV Second Person, September 11 Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the choices Sam made that led him into the SRU.</p><p>
  <i>The dream lasts until your first dinner home, which is the first time your father has never said anything but good of you, and you think you can make another tour at least.  When you call back to Toronto to withdraw your SRU application, you don't even ask how you did.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left, Right, Left

**Author's Note:**

> Just a brief sketch of some of my assumptions about Sam whenever I write him. Thanks to Goshawk for giving me some pointers.

Your Dad doesn't sleep until three days after 9/11.  You hear it from your Mom, because you're staying the fuck away from Petawawa, but Canadian forces got put on standby the moment the Twin Towers got hit, ready to run to the rescue.  God knows what your Dad's been up to, but for the first week everyone on the ground's anticipating urban warfare and mass pandemonium that never quite turns out.  Nothing else gets hit after the attack.  Life goes back to normal.

You've been in Metro PD for five years now; been in uniform since you were eighteen, and you've been picking up college classes here and there but your Dad's not riding you and it's all looked pretty good so far.  You haven't found _it_ —whatever it is you're looking for—but you were only just a little shy of making the cut into SRU and you can apply again next year.

But over the next year your Dad emails you from Afghanistan, every day or twice a week or whenever he can reach the keyboard, and it's like being a teenager again and reading about Somalia on the news, it's like the months after he came home, different and strange and frightening even for him.

So by 2002 you don't even know why you're doing it and you don't have any good defenses when your boyfriend breaks up with you, when you tell him you're enlisting in the Army.

Actually, you don't really know why he's breaking up with you either, because it hasn't been against the rules to be an enlisted queer for a decade now, and you did the long-distance thing last summer when he went to Montreal for work.  There's supposed to be some kind of curse on cops' marriages, which your (divorced) partner always said you'd probably escaped because you're not dating a woman, so it could just be coming home to roost.  That's what other people suggest.

Once you've had time to think it over, you figure the curse thing is probably just bullshit anyway.  It's way more about finding someone who can put up with your bullshit, which Brian was pretty so-so on.  (You imagine a questionnaire: "On a scale of one to five, is your boyfriend: 1, not an asshole at all, to 5, a major douche.  This bothers you: 1, almost never, to 5, every waking moment."  The two of you were 3's pretty much all around.)  He probably just wanted to break up with you, and this was as good an excuse as any to say, "It's not me, it's you."

Your Dad will swear up, down, and sideways that his private views are private and some of the finest soldiers he's served with are queer, which is pretty much what you keep using to nail him down whenever he's being an asshole, but when he grudgingly asks after Brian and you tell him what happened he makes it really damn clear that "it's just as well that you find out he's not suitable for you sooner rather than later" does not mean shit about whether Brian would ever make a good officer's spouse.

Anyway, you're too busy getting indoctrinated to keep dwelling on it all the time (as if) and you surprise yourself by getting laid in basic military qualification in Quebec, twice.  The guy ends up in your MSN messenger contacts and when you cross paths again in Wainwright after your first tour you sleep with him again; you and the girl pretend it never happened because girls who sleep around in barracks… well, they get known as girls who sleep around in barracks, and she's offered to castrate you if you tell anyone.

The fucked-up fact of being in the Army is that your Dad is so fucking proud of you it makes Natalie hate you, just a little, which she tells you when you get drunk the week before you go to Afghanistan.  She just doesn't hate you all the way because you're _going to Afghanistan._

Your Dad calls you sometimes because he's twenty klicks away but somehow, mysteriously, you're almost never around in person to meet his friends and be "My son Sam—infantry, just like his Dad." 

The time between the first and second deployment is spent, mysteriously, on course so much you hardly get home at all.  You're learning everything—hand-to-hand and machine guns and tactics and field psychology and conflict mediation, and French and Pashtu, and you finally get the certificates to say you know as much about field medicine as you actually do.  You qualify for JTF-2, trade infantry in for special ops, and they assign you as a long-distance marksman.

 The week before you go see your folks in Chalk River you go four rounds with SRU recruiting because they're open to non-Metro PD personnel and you'd like to think you might be a civilian again someday.  The dream lasts until your first dinner home, which is the first time your father has never said anything but good of you, and you think you can make another tour at least.  When you call back to Toronto to withdraw your application, you don't even ask how you did.

Your Dad even asks if you're seeing anyone, and for once it doesn't even sound like a loaded question.  (It's always a loaded question with your Mom, because she has always clung to the word _bisexual_ like it's her hope of Heaven and grandbabies.  But on balance—it's your Mom.  You can put up with your Mom.)

And the second time Afghanistan doesn't feel like it's smothering you all the time, partly because you've got people you trust with you.  You've got their backs and they've saved you beer when you get back to base.  Matt lends you comic books and Keira introduces you to _Lost_ and you even reteach yourself knitting when you're sick of both of those and you realize no one's calling anyone a faggot here, because Adrian beat you there three years ago.

It mostly smothers and strangles when you're turning out mittens for everyone back home and you can hear fans and the tinny sound of someone's iPod through their earbuds and you wonder just how much longer you'll whore yourself out for your father's approval because pretty soon they'll ask you to stay on past the four years you signed up for.

Matt answers that question for you.  When you've shot your best friend and they're sending you home on compassionate leave, it's too fucking hard to give in anymore.  Your Dad's in the middle of his plan to get you back into a different unit when you tell him to fuck himself and leave the room.

You're sick of dancing to the tune of what he wants and doesn't want and you're sick of living your life in various stages of rebellion.  Half the reason you've never had a girlfriend was how fucking happy it would make him.  Maybe now you'll get one just because you can, though you're not exactly sure how that happens.

When you're processing out of the service at JTF-2 headquarters you phone back to Toronto about a job.  The person plugs your name into a computer and asks you to please wait, and after half an hour on hold they patch you through to Commander Norm Holleran, who says that you made it into SRU before you dropped out, they've got an unexpected opening, and can you come three days from now.

You miss keeping the peace, though you kind of forget what it looks like.  So you say yes.


End file.
